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UK Copyright Reforms Legalize Back-Ups, Protect Parody
rastos1 writes A law has come into effect that permits UK citizens to make copies of CDs, MP3s, DVDs, Blu-rays and e-books. Consumers are allowed to keep the duplicates on local storage or in the cloud. While it is legal to make back-ups for personal use, it remains an offence to share the data with friends or family. Users are not allowed to make recordings of streamed music or video from Spotify and Netflix, even if they subscribe to the services. Thirteen years after iTunes launched, it is now legal to use it to rip CDs in the UK. Just as interesting are the ways that the new UK law explicitly, if imperfectly, protects parody.
Yeah Buddy
This is progress of a sort, though it has been a very long road with many false starts.
Even so, it's interesting to see what they didn't include. For example, notice that almost none of the changes affect software at all, nor do they help at all with content that is protected by technical measures for DRM purposes.
In other words, those who want to remain legal are still at the mercy of content providers doing things that may or may not work reliably, may or may not interfere with the normal operation of computers/mobile devices, may or may not cause huge problems with restoring access to purchased content if such devices fail, etc.
Don't be fooled. A lot of the apparent improvements in this new law are immediately negated by technical measures.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
*New pirate bay servers are opened in the UK*
www.PirateFlix.co.uk - a parody of a media distribution service.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
It has been legal to make personal backups here in the US for decades. They way big media circumvented that law was by lobbying for the DMCA and once passed, encrypt everything. Thus nullifying the law for the consumers.
Well, that legitimises UKIP, then.
That's not how I read the BBC article, but if that is what it meant then it is wrong.
We have the EUCD here, which in somewhat similar to the DMCA. In fact, it is arguably stricter in this particular area, because it covers not only access control mechanisms but also copy protection mechanisms. The relevant details of the EU directive have been incorporated into UK law for roughly a decade.
Rightsholders can therefore pursue not only those circumventing such technical measures but also those making or distributing the equipment used to do so, and in some cases this can fall under criminal rather than civil law. Moreover, this has actually happened, for example in the Sony PS2 mod chip case.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Old men with no understanding of anything make more rules which nobody will take any notice of.
Whatever...
What about the Betamax case in the U.S.?
Is there a difference between timeshifting something on cable television and timeshifting something on Netflix? Although in the latter (and On Demand too), it's requested footage. Which brings up the question: Are we only allowed to timeshift if it's a live feed/stream of something?
What would you have?
Personally, in an ideal world but one where we accept the basic principle of copyright as a reasonable economic tool? I'd have:
1. 100% effective DRM. (Yes, really, but read on for what balances it.)
2. Compulsory escrow for any work being distributed commercially with DRM applied, and criminal sanctions for those who fail to provide the unprotected content to the relevant regulatory authority.
3. Much shorter copyright durations, probably varying by industry/type of work and dictated by what creates a reasonable commercial incentive but not an excessive one in each context, which I suspect would be around 5-10 years in most cases.
4. Original creators keeping the master copyright to any work they do, so big media distributors can only ever have exclusive licensing for relatively short periods (maybe 1-2 years) after which they have to renegotiate with the original creators if they want to renew their licence.
In short, I would give the creators primary control for the duration of the copyright, I would make big distribution channels into a market that is subservient to creators rather than the other way around, and then within that structure, members of the general public get a clear choice to enjoy a work immediately on whatever terms the market will support (one-off purchase, rental, library subscription, etc.) or to wait a significant but not absurd length of time until the work enters the public domain forever.
In shorter, I'd screw the distributor middlemen, make copyright back into something that provides a reasonable incentive to create and share good works, and make the default legal position that everyone can enjoy everything once that incentive has done its job.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
My hovercraft is full of eels
If my neighbour has his stereo turned up too loud so I can hear his music through the wall does that mean I can get him busted for copyright infringement (for an unauthorised public performance)?
Nope, doesn't circumvent backups. Even with encryption in place you can make a bit-for-bit copy of the medium; the bit-for-bit copy will play just fine because it's the player that does decryption. Encryption doesn't prevent piracy, it protects markets (your Region 1 player won't play Region 2 Blu-rays for example, and it's difficult to make Free software players because of needing the secret key). You can always, always pirate something by capturing the line-out or video (or putting a microphone in front of your speakers and a camcorder in front of your 8K upscaling TV). You'll lose a bit of quality on the video side, but for audio the loss should be no worse than the compression losses are anyway.
Haha just shows how easy it is to mistakenly think those nice sensible American laws apply everywhere, when you're discussing these things on the internet. Yay for now actually being correct!
This. It's another law They can use to nail you if They have a reason to do so, but which 99.99% of people will ignore and will be safe to ignore, just like we've been ignoring the previous law.
There are plenty of such laws anyway: everybody's guilty of something if you look hard enough. Nothing to see here, move along.
While it is legal to make back-ups for personal use, it remains an offence to share the data with friends or family.
How far does that go? I'm thinking in both the US and the UK. I bought a CD, and my wife listens to it on the CD player. No problem, she has the disc, she holds the copy. Now I upload it to cloud storage and she streams it. Still fine. But what if we both stream it? Did I need to buy a second disc so I have a second license?
All existent content is naturally abundant when the cost of duplicating it is fractions of a cent.
Indeed. No-one is arguing that abolishing copyright today wouldn't be good for everyone but the rightsholders tomorrow. It's whether it's still good for everyone next week or next year or ten years from now that is in question.
Your point about the best amateur work today competing with good professional work from a decade or two ago is well made, and it's a sign of how far and how fast technology has evolved in recent years. However, it's also a sign that amateurs now have access to tools and techniques originally developed for professionals a few years ago. You're ignoring that in a world where no-one has any incentive to make big budget productions like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, there is also no budget to develop those professional-grade tools in the first place and nothing to start the trickle down effect.
I think you're also overstating the case dramatically. While today's dedicated and skilled amateurs can make work rivalling professional quality from yesteryear, few amateurs have the time and skill to actually do it. The rest of the time, you get music recordings that are good, but not as good as they would have been if someone had hired a professional recording studio with the right acoustics and equipment. You get the occasional brilliant piece of writing, but you have to filter out a thousand uninspired works of fan fiction to find it. You get a fun film project, but it looks like someone's friend held the camcorder and they ran through a couple of After Effects tutorials afterwards, because that really is what happened. And of course they used After Effects, probably downloaded from a pirate site, to do that, because for the most part the community-built alternatives to professionally created software don't cut it.
As a final point, the growth in capabilities and scale for modern creative projects is astounding. Twenty years ago, a single developer could create a state-of-the-art game, maybe with a little help from specialists on the graphics and audio fronts. Today, a single good developer can still create a fun game, but it won't look like the state-of-the-art, or anything close to it. I'm all for games with interesting gameplay and films with interesting storylines, and I'll be the first to agree that those are more important than the latest big budget effects and a full soundtrack. But professional quality work today can produce all of the above, and no small group of amateurs will ever compete with that, no matter how enthusiastic or skilled they might be or how long you wait.
So I don't think it's self-evident from your valid point about what some today's amateurs can do today that amateurs in a few years would match today's best professional work if we abolished the incentives for big budget productions tomorrow. Star Wars was released in 1977, nearly four decades ago, and today's hobbyists on YouTube are still doing light saber effects. At that rate, most of us will be dead before anyone is keeping up with what today's commercial industry can do.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.